Armistice day Saturday 11th November 2023

Wow, to think our Mothers could have been on the same assembly line, maybe even spoke to each other, laughed together, maybe even shed a tear together having heard the news of some other poor mothers loss of a husband or son. Sends a shiver down my spine just thinking about it.
The lasses in the munitions factories were heroes too.
A visit to the Devil's Porridge Museum in Gretna underlines that sentiment imo.
She was at Wylex too just down the road
 
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Very busy in Bristol this morning.
 
Had a really weird dream last night. My late father was asking why I hadn't put his Dads photo on the forum too :unsure:
So here we go..

The first photo is my paternal grandfather William (taken sometime in the fifties). He served in both WW1 & WW2. He joined the Coldstream guards right at the end of WW1.
When WW2 broke out he tried to re-enlist but at 38 he was too old. So he tried to join the Navy but again was refused as was too old. So he died his hair black, lied about his age and joined the RAF as ground crew (an artificer) in a Hurricane squadron and went to France as part of the BEF. He was evacuated from the beaches at Dunkirk in 1940. He spent the rest of the war manning a barrage balloon in Cheltenham and drinking the pubs dry. He was a bit of a "rogue" and liked the drink and the ladies. I don't have any photos of him in uniform as I believe my embittered gran burnt them all he had buggered off. He was known in the family as "Wicked Will". I can count on the fingers of one hand the amount of times I met the bugger.

The second photo is my dad.
He joined the Royal Navy in 1944 and served on the fleet air arm aircraft carrier HMS Glory as a stoker mechanic. He saw action in the Pacific until the Japanese surrender. He was a decent man and never drank. However, he was bit of an authoritarian and when I was young I was forbidden to have any toy guns. His ship was responsible for bringing back many POWs (human skeletons as he described) I think that these experiences affected him deeply until his death in 1985 aged just 57. He, like myself, loved motorbikes. When I bought a Honda he asked who made it. I explained that it was a Japanese bike. He went berserk :(

The third photo is my Uncle Ted (my dads older brother)
He also joined the Navy and served on HMS Venerable. Ted was a lovely easy going kind chap who saw the good and the gold in everyone. He only passed away last year at the age of 95

So I have done my bit .. story told .. warts & all
 

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Not sure what plane he was standing alongside but he flew a bomer. They were shot down and crash landed in Denmark. The crew were then lined up alongside the plane and shot, this was witnessed by locals in the village and relayed to his brothers when visiting his grave in Aabenraa.
Definatly a Hawker of that vintage, they where still flown around wwII, link below shows a good photo of the single seat Fury, and you can see it has a lot of common features, if you research the other types you might see photos with no rad, this is because it retracts into fuselage.
 
Definatly a Hawker of that vintage, they where still flown around wwII, link below shows a good photo of the single seat Fury, and you can see it has a lot of common features, if you research the other types you might see photos with no rad, this is because it retracts into fuselage.
They were started by a truck with a frame on the back with a engine connection shaft to engage to the prop, called a hucks starter.
hucks.jpg
 

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